+1 for renewables
Q: are solar farms also present in the open data?

they are, yes, if greater than 1MW output. Open data is the https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/renewable-energy-planning-database-monthly-extract

Jez. Beware that the REPD wind data isn't great quality. It's a record of initial planning applications, not what actually got built!

I know this data in detail as I maintain a list of embedded generation at work. Can probably share Scottish data but the rest still contains renewable UK data sources.

P.s. see variable pitch website that uses RO data (renewable obligation).

If we go with renewables can we add ev charge points also? Electric vehicles are going to be increasingly important and the current commerical mapping is a bit fractured. I believe there's a realtime API to the National Charge Point Register which is opendata

If we go with bus route relations can we all pile in and collaborate to complete one city? Having a complete map in one place as a demonstrator I think is more valuable than a gradual improvement everywhere which is kind of invisible

Are there any really good simple guides on how to map bus routes, last time I looked it was very complicated. Any good youtube videos that are accurate on how to do it?

Not that I have found.

I can only speak in a personal capacity but I think we also have the situation, as is the case with a lot of mapping of intermediate complexity, where iD and Potlatch fall a little short of being able to handle things well, and JOSM is overly complex. (I've yet to use Merkaator - maybe I'm missing a trick!)

Having said that, if we go choose to go with bus routing for the Quarterly, I am quite happy to put together a how-to for people to use.

The first problem I see is how do I survey bus routes, short of spending large amounts of time and money travelling the routes?

That said I do find the transport layer useful, especially in rural areas, as it gives a visual indication of where the buses go rather than the traveline approach of where do you want to go.

Not helped by there being at least 2 ways of representing a bus route. See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bus_routes_in_London (see method described under Legacy bus routes). How does this reflect what ia done outside London.

I think bus routes is a useful topic even if it isnt the July-Sept project. Maybe preparitory work for Oct project.

Most routes outside London seem to be mapped (if they are at all) with type=route. Ideally these would be subsumed under new route_master relations but, whether we do this next Quarterly or some time in the future, I feel the important thing is filling in the basic coverage rather than getting the tagging updated. Having said that, why not aim high?

How appropriate that London uses the route_master tagging extensively :)

Public art (Statues, Art and Plaques)

Public art (Statues, Art and Plaques)
+1

Seems nicely outside for summer

Knowing how frequently bus routes change, I'm not convinced mapping them is all that useful, added with the complexity of service patterns, such as series that only run on school days, or once a day/week there's a special service which uses the same route number buy goes somewhere else.

Station entrances and other detailed information to support bus routing, and the linking of stops to the route network is however useful.

That's surely just a question of framing the project correctly. So it is perfectly valid to leave off occasional services - school services, once-a-week shopper services, etc, and demand responsive "area" services almost have to be left off because they are unmappable as relations as they don't have a fixed route.

But none of that invalidates the need to improve the data. After all, one of the default layers on openstreetmap.org is a transport layer, and there are parts of the UK that are very, very poorly complete (my map happened to open on Grimsby just now, and there are one or two routes at most, and none when you get outside the town). Does partial data look partial, or does it make it look like there are no services to a place? In large towns, probably the former, but in smaller places it will be the latter and people could well be put off travelling as a result.

I would personally, as a member of the public, find improved transport maps a very useful addition.

I'm happy to put this back to a later project if people wish, so that I can get some ducks lined up in terms of visualisers, etc. But what I can offer is the open data Traveline National Data Set (TNDS), but at a point earlier in the process than the TNDS output because that strips out the route tracks at present. So I can provide routing data for the SE, EM and EA regions of traveline, and I can process the data to identify which are the frequent routes, compared to the once-a-day variations or even the occasional service. I'm working at providing a visualiser for this data.

As I said in a previous thread, the source data isn't perfect because it is automatically generated in many cases. But I also see this as a two-way street where both sets of data are improved - we have a starting position, we have sources that we can cross reference (operators and local authorities, although have to check usage terms if there are any), and we can map out on the street via survey. Best of all, once we have it up and running I can re-visualise the data each week and flag up changes. At least, that's the intention.

Cheers
Stuart

The public art would be great for the "outdoor months".
We might be able to find lists, such as https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_Kingdom_Sustrans_Artwork that need locations found.

As an aside, I swear that when I woke up earlier in the week to the BBC news on Radio 3, they were announcing a £4m project to photograph public art and then release it as open data. But I can’t find any reference to it now, so I’m actually unsure if it is a thing, or just a figment of my imagination!
Regards,
Stuart

As lead dev of openplaques.org ( http://openplaques.org ) I would gladly accept a slice of that 4 mill ;)